Meal Plans & Schedules

 

One of the first things I have had to implement in our household is to make sure I have a schedule for everything each week. Over the years it has been a lot easier to have it written down, so everyone knows what to expect for themselves and everyone else.

Of all the different issues that the average person faces each day, one of the hardest things for autistic people to deal with, at least in our house, is having to deal with the unexpected. However, this is one of the easier things that I can help with for the rest of my family. Sure, some of the time you cannot anticipate and will have to just roll with the punches as it comes up. But over the years I have found many contingency plans to have in place in case something does come up that is out of my control. For instance. I have a weekly meal plan that gets ‘posted’ on Sundays for the upcoming week. (By posted I mean I write it on our stainless steel refrigerator door with a wet erase marker.) 

A terrible picture, I apologize. No matter where I stood the glare and shadows were pretty bad. I still added it because I wanted to show the representation of it so you had an idea of what I was talking about. 

I try to stick to it as closely as I can. Sometimes a day gets thrown off, and other chores or activities take longer than we anticipate, and dinner could not be what was on the schedule. In those cases, it is understood that the alternative is freezer pizza, or McDonalds. Depending on where we are and what the situation is. If we are out of the house and did not make it back in time to make dinner and are still out, the answer will be McDonalds fast food. If we are home, and just lost track of time, or whatever the reason is, we will pull some frozen pizzas out to bake up. At any given time, we all make sure that there are at least three frozen pizzas in our chest freezer. Gluten free and glutinous, for the forty percent of my family that has Celiacs disease. This is also an easy option for us because everyone in the house knows how to make it and is competent at it. Even our youngest who cannot drive yet can hop on his bike and ride over to get something from McDonalds. Our’s is only about half a mile from our house.

This also works for our family so that everyone knows that if the schedule is off they know what the alternative is. So, they can easily expect what is on the menu or the alternative. There are not thousands of options and are then paralyzed by the choices or options.

Sometime during the week I try to prep some breakfast and dessert options as well. They do not need to be difficult or involved. I will mix up a batch of muffins, add a few scoops of protein powder, and bake them up. Boom! Easy grab breakfast for everyone, whether they are in a hurry or not!

I write out what our schedule is for the week and then fill in what nights would work best for certain dishes, before I post them on the refrigerator door. These screenshots are from my planning word document. 

There are not a lot of ways that I can help my family to control their lives and there are so many things that I cannot help with that they need to be able to figure out on their own. I could just let them figure this world out by themselves, but after looking at my husband’s experience with that, I do not think that is the best idea either. I want to help them thrive into the best adult versions of themselves that I can.

I believe if my young adults are still trying to navigate smaller areas of their lives and surrounding world they find themselves in at thirty years old, they will have spent so much energy on appearing put together and have systems in place and less on how to actually be an adult.

I figure the more I can give my husband and children they can expect and are in control of, the more energy they will have to put toward the things they can not.